Rock band plays for the sick

ROCK BAND guitarist Pep Gualberto plays with his eldest daughter, Veronica, 14. PEP GUALBERTO/CONTRIBUTOR

SAN PEDRO CITY, Laguna—It could be quite late for a man at 42 to pursue a career in music. Yet, Victor “Pep” Gualberto keeps playing, not to earn a living but to raise money for the dying.

Gualberto began performing in 2011, the year when his cousin, Cez Cantos, was diagnosed with colon cancer. Like him, Cantos also played in a band on cruise ships almost half her life.

“The cancer was already on Stage 4. It was really hard for the family and to me because she was like a sister,” he remembered.

Cantos died “within months” at the age of 44, but left medical expenses that reached P1.3 million. “How much more difficult it could be if the family could not afford it,” Gualberto had thought.

After her death, Gualberto returned on stage with the band called “The Disciples.” The four members played in bars to raise money for the terminally ill.

In 2013, the group was renamed “Daddy’s Off Duty” or DOD, “basically because we are all fathers with daytime jobs and perform only when we’re off our duties,” he said.

Gualberto started playing the guitar for show bands in 1994. As a musician of new wave to pop and rock, he described his life then as the usual “sex, drugs and alcohol.”

“We used to play ‘eight days a week’ as we called it. We played at bars and sometimes have been invited to perform out of town for days or weeks,” he remembered.

Benefit gigs

Although money came quickly—he used to earn P300 per show in the ’90s—playing in a band was never a stable job. In 2006, Gualberto flew to Dubai and worked as a designer in a product showroom.

But music, as he says, is like a “sleeping dragon that needs to be unleashed.”

He returned to the Philippines in 2008 and opened a small guitar school in his hometown in Sta. Rosa City, Laguna province. He also keeps a job in a furniture shop in Makati City.

DOD plays ’70s rock usually at Mang Rudy’s Grill in Makati and at Windsor Tavern in Sta. Rosa. During their shows, the band solicits “tips” from the audience for target beneficiaries. Among those they have helped were a 35-year-old father battling brain cancer and a mother with an ovarian tumor.

The band also raised funds for a 3-year-old child, who suffered from encephalitis. His family spent P2.5 million for his treatment. The boy, Gualberto’s godchild, died just last Oct. 11.

“Even if these people die, our goal is to at least be able to help extend their lives (through medication),”Gualberto said.

Word of their cause spread through friends that even total strangers contacted them, some through Facebook, and asked the band to organize benefit concerts.

The band raises P15,000 to P20,000 from about three nightly shows and taps private individuals willing to send money from abroad.

Rich in music

“I was not born a rich guy and couldn’t shell out my personal money. But music is what I’m good at, so might as well use this to help others,” Gualberto said.

He thanks his family for supporting his music and cause.

On Aug. 22, it was through music that Gualberto proposed to marry his longtime partner, Cathlyn Montallana, 33, with whom he has three daughters.

“I told her that parents usually wouldn’t approve a musician marrying their daughters because they usually end up poor. That might be true, I remain penniless, but I was able to save up for her ring even if I had to skip lunches,” he said onstage after the performance.

And, of course, she said yes to a beach wedding in March next year, which Gualberto imagines to be filled with music and solemnity.